The director and cast talk about wanting to do justice to the source material.

Few movies have been drawing quite as much buzz for their lead performances as Beautiful Boy, featuring Steve Carell as David Sheff, father of Timothée Chalamet’s Nic Sheff, the titular boy, and then young man, whose life is derailed by addiction. Based on two memoirs – one by David and one by Nic – the film plays out the relationship between father and son across many years, fluidly moving between time periods, convincingly putting the audience into the thick of the disease. Rotten Tomatoes’ Grae Drake sat down with Carell and Chalamet, as well as co-star Amy Ryan and director Felix Van Groeningen to talk about doing justice to the material, and portraying addiction in a realistic light.